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New from Roland: Nice size for gigs:

https://www.roland.com/global/products/rd-88/

Looks like a great stage piano for gigs indeed, as I wrote in the other thread about NAMM. If I started purchasing gear for gigs (before I already got a SL73 and a MODX6), that would be my choice.

Is there any info about the sound engine?...they say 'Supernatural'. It sounds, from the harsh metallic clanking in the demos, like the sample based original Supernatural pianos. Although they also state "newly developed" piano sounds. If the piano sounds are okay, i.e., don't have either the synthy fakeness of Roland fully modelled pianos or the metallic twanging of the original Supernatural pianos, it would be a very attractive product indeed. Here's hoping they've tweaked the piano sound problems out of it.

Sorry Gene, did not see you post. But I think this was a good move on Roland's part meeting needs of giggers and buskers for sure. The small onboard speakers are nice touch for practice and traveling.

Seems like stage pianos with built-in speakers are becoming a bit of trend. First the SV2, now the RD-88. Who's next ?

Indeed, the acoustic piano in the demos sounds a bit metallic which is probably the non-fully-modeled SN-piano (what a mouthful!) from the past 😒 Also, the Rhodes piano has that rubbery/plinky quality that's also a shame since it's the modeled Rhodes they started using instead of their previous great sampled Rhodes 😡 There's no perfect board I think. I hate the sampled Rhodes in my MODX and I was at the verge of getting rid of the MODX after being frustrated with it at many fronts but I discovered Yamaha had released a free 400MB sample library with sampled Chick Corea's Mark V and I experimented with it the last night and was really pleasantly surprised by it, so for the moment I'm staying with it. But this RD88 is a very tempting instrument.

True, Not to get off RD88 topic, but I like the trend. The RD88 speakers look exceptionally small compared to other slabs, yet onboard speakers are still "ok" for monitoring and practice, especially when travelling. Maybe even some slabs good enough for small gig in classroom, retirement home, or coffee shop. My Kawai ES7 speakers filled a small-to-medium room nicely. I think there always has been and will be a market for stage pianos with onboard speakers. I would really like to see the king of onboard speakers gets a long overdue update. I am referring to the Yamaha CP300. Those speakers could fill a room for sure. Still see that board out there at a lot of places.

Hmm? You can't judge the sound by that video. Anyone notice in the demo it is plugged into mainstage?

It's hard to say from the video. It looks to me like this is a scaled-down descendent of the RD-800. I've managed to customize the acoustic and tine pianos into pretty usable versions. It stays in my studio due to weight and size, but the RD-88 may be a giggle version of the 800. Same action, which is pretty enjoyable to play and relatively accurate for a digital instrument.

The form factor, weight and simplicity are plusses for live play. Speakers seem tiny, but we will have to wait until they get out into the wild.

The MainStage integration is by design according to the website. Interesting move.

I'm glad to see a real button interface, a move away from either scrolling or using the piano keys as controls, as has gotten so common on the lightweight slabs. Probably has real (5-pin DIN) MIDI, too.

But is it the same action? What's in RD-800 - PHA-IV Concert? If RD-88 has PHA-IV Standard then it's a completely different action with much shorter pivots and would be the same as FP10 and FP30, i.e., Roland's current cheapest action. It's perfectly fine for what it is but not the same as RD-800 (if my guess is right).

Is it slimmer than Privia PX-S? Is it? 😉

RD-88
1,284 (W) x 258 (D) x 159 (H) mm
50-9/16 (W) x 10-3/16 (D) x 6-5/16 (H) inches
13.5 kg / 29 lbs 13 oz

PX-S3000
1,322 (W) x 232 (D) x 102 (H) mm
52 (W) x 9 (D) x 4 inch (H) inches
11.2 kg (exclude batteries) / 24.7 lb (exclude batteries)

Yet another SuperNatural. Someone should tell Roland engineers that the SuperNatural piano sounds like an advanced toy piano sound. LOL yet another repacking done by Roland.

Roland lists their stage pianos in this order, which leaves a lot of room for replacement products above and below the RD-88's US$1200 price point. I wonder if we'll see an RD-64 again?

1. V-Piano
2. RD-2000 US$2500
3. RD-800
4. RD-88 US$1200
5. RD-300NX

Interestingly, the FP-60 at US$1500 is very competitive with the RD-88. Though the FP-60 does emphasize 'piano' features while the RD-88 emphasizes features for the 'stage'.

Keyboard development is almost always evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Especially at lower price points. The last Roland piano that was truly new was the $7000 (?) V-Piano over ten years ago. But that's still better than most other companies. What was the last piano from Yamaha, Korg, Kawai, Nord, or Kurzweil that was not largely a repackaging of something they had done before? Still, over time, the small changes add up, and the current boards are generally better than the boards of 20+ years ago. Not different from most other tech, really.

There is no point in introducing a new keyboard if it is the same thing as the already existing ones. Reducing the price of the old keyboards will do the same thing. This is called ripping off costumers in my dictionary. How many lines of keyboards one company needs?

It has nothing to do with evolution and revolution. It is all about making money and maximizing the profit from an already retired technology.

The price tag isn't going to make an instrument sound good. V-Piano was great a decade ago. Any demo I've listened to so far, from high to low-quality sounds synthesized.

Instead of throwing keyboards like spaghetti noodles at the wall, Roland can focus on improving SuperNatural sounds and offer better sounds but it constantly fails in this very important department.

Abdol, it’s the most compact and lightweight RD (i.e. professional, in contrast to home pianos from the FP-series) Roland stage piano that also adds speakers. The closest Roland piano is RD-300NX which is longer, wider and much heavier without even having speakers. It’s a very welcome addition to their RD-line and the price is very good.

If they could just reduce the price of old keyboards, there would be no point to spending money on the R&D and fabrication costs of a new model. Obviously, this is not the same as any existing model.

I'm not in the market right now, but if I were, to me, this is the most appealing piano Roland has come out with in probably 10 years. Heck, in terms of a piano that's under 30 lbs, you'd probably have to go back almost 20 years to the RS-9 for a decent really lightweight 88 (and that didn't even have a hammer action). Even the slightly heavier FP-4 is I think 13 years old, and that was the last "light" Roland piano that had any interest for me whatsoever. I won't know until I see a manual and get my fingers and ears around one, but potentially, this looks like the best gigging piano Roland has ever made. Lightweight, speakers, pitch and mod controls, MIDI master keyboard functions (presumably MIDI zoning and assignable controls), what looks like a decent number of direct patch selection buttons, line input, DIN MIDI as well as USB, multiple pedal support, and whether it's to your particular taste or not, a perfectly usable piano sound and a variety of other sounds. It may not be something you care about, but to me, on paper, this is pretty killer.


You're making a lot of assumptions. There's no calculus that says that, if they didn't do this kind of repackaging, they would have been able to come out with better sounds. They may still be working on better sounds, or conversely, they may not know how to make supernatural any better than it is (at least with current technology at marketable prices). Or maybe they found that the number of buyers choosing a non-Roland DP because they didn't like the sounds was smaller than the number of buyers choosing a non-Roland DP because Roland didn't have something light enough with a usable live interface. We're just not in a position to know these things. But we'll know whether they made a good decision once we see whether or not it becomes a strong seller.

It's always interesting to read a Roland thread online. They're extremely popular in the real world, I see them everywhere and honestly feels like I see them in YouTube videos more than any other brand besides Yamaha and yet on forums everyone seems to hate them and call them "metallic" and "synthy". V-piano sounds great to me in most videos (especially played by marasy) though I've never heard one in person, and so does the RD-2000. RD-88 sounds okay to me. Not the best but not awful. Most interesting thing about this to me is that it's compatible with Zen-Core https://www.roland.com/us/company/press_releases/2020/ROLAND-UNVEILS-ZEN-CORE-SYNTHESIS-SYSTEM/